1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to designing and updating of a construction plan of a large-scale plant such as a nuclear power station, and, more specifically, to a technique of supporting arrangement of a layout of various types of operation areas which is required for a plant construction.
2. Description of the Related Art
Along with an increasing power demand, needs for constructing nuclear power stations have been growing all over the world. More and more numbers of operations for constructing the nuclear power stations have been thus implemented here and abroad. In constructing a large-scale plant such as a power station, various types of operations are performed in parallel such as ground preparation of a planned site, construction of a building, carry-in and installment of equipment, and piping. Those works are performed based on consensus of different operating bodies for construction, civil engineering, manufacturing, or the like, and under their respective directions.
Roughly speaking, such a large-scale plant construction undergoes three stages, namely, designing, procurement, and construction. Operations performed at the designing stage include designing of a plant building and an interior of the building, layout designing of equipment installed in the interior of the building, setting a carry-in procedure and a carry-in schedule, setting an area for temporarily placing machinery and equipment before being carried into a final position, setting a type or an operable range preferably a heavy machinery for carry-in, or the like. Those operations are performed based on examinations between the operating bodies. At the procurement stage, material, equipment, or the like which has been required at the designing stage are procured. Operations for the procurement are performed such that the material is carried in a construction site according to a prescribed carry-in schedule. And, at the construction stage, operations using heavy machinery or the like are performed based on the carry-in procedure set at the designing stage. The heavy machinery or the like operates within the operable range set at the designing stage so as not to cause interference with that of other operating body. It is thus important to draw up an efficient and highly accurate operation plan at the designing stage in order to reduce a design change at respective stages and facilitate an entire implementation of the operations. A person of experience usually creates such an operation plan at the designing stage. Recently, however, a less-experienced person is also required to create an efficient operation plan, because a rising demand of plant construction has increased the number of the plan designs.
In drawing up a plant construction plan for a nuclear power station or the like, a planner intends to maximize entire operation efficiency by coordinating plural conditions such as a carry-in procedure of equipment into a building and a type of heavy machinery used for the carry-in.
Conventional techniques available for drawing up such a plan disclose that a progress situation at a given point of an operation of a construction is displayed on a screen in three-dimensional graphics by associating data on an execution plan of the construction with data on a three-dimensional model of a structure or a member for the construction (see, for example: Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application, Publication No. 2001-249985; and Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application, Publication No. H06-187355). The conventional techniques are effective in checking up an operation concerning a plant to be constructed itself, because a progress of the construction is conveniently displayed on a screen in three-dimensional graphics using the data on a three-dimensional model of a structure or a member for the designed construction. The conventional techniques, however, fails to disclose arrangement of a layout of various operation areas required for a plant construction.
A work period required for completion of a large-scale plant construction is long. With a progress of the construction, an operation areas layout is usually subjected to reexamination where necessary. In response to this, for example, the work period is divided into plural subperiods. Diagrams of the operation areas layout for each of the subperiods are prepared. And, the operation areas layout is manually managed using the diagrams. Meanwhile, if an execution plan of the construction is changed and the operation areas layout requires reexamination, the operation areas layout should be appropriately changed without causing interference between operation areas, based on the plural diagrams. However, the conventional techniques have such problems that, because it is difficult to precisely know whether or not there is interference between the operation areas, an otherwise unnecessary measure has to be taken to deal with an interference which is found after an operation starts, or the construction plan has to be considerably revised.